In all, this elaborate sideshow we still call an election isn’t an election at all; it’s an auction, and the cheapness of the bids ought to offend us all.  Lobbyists and Hedge Fund managers at least coughed up bribes, er, bids of at least a million, since that’s what they spend on, say, shirt laundry, but when you get to the banksters, America looks like a four dollar tart.  Really, Goldman Sachs, you’re only coughing up $496,430 to save America from European-style socialism?  Couldn’t you have at least rounded it up?  And JPMorgan Chase only stuffed $317,400 into Mitt’s magic underwear, undoubtedly in crumpled singles.  That’s about what they make on fraudulent overdraft charges in about eight minutes; and yet that’s all they have to spare to oust that commie who once called them (oooh…) fat cats?  Why do they think buying a President is so cheap?

The wrinkle in this, which I don’t think the activist judges on the Supreme Court thought through as they planned to fulfill Karl Rove’s “Permanent Republican Majority” dream with their errant Citizens United decision, is obvious.  Republican voter totals in Florida were down from 2008, in the double digits.  Could that be the result of a merciless barrage of annoying, repetitive, and sneaky commercials, 13,000 of them?  Before the money tide rolled in, Republicans across the country were much more enthusiastic about voting than understandably dispirited Democrats.  After being doused for weeks in plutocrat-funded sewage, many must have decided they needed to shower on election day.

More interestingly, the attacks were directed at someone most everyone despises, Newt Gingrich.  Thus, though the ad onslaught must certainly have been annoying, it wouldn’t have beeen offensive to most people, particularly those elusive “Independents” needed in the general election.  It will be a little different when the gold-plated fire hoses are aimed at President Obama, who maintains high personal approval, even though both right and left agree he’s been a big disappointment.  Thinking people know Obama isn’t a European socialist intent on destroying capitalism, quite the opposite, and are likely to find attempts to smear him as such both offensive and dumb.  Best of all, Romney has nothing positive at all to say about himself that ordinary voters want to hear, not even 4% worth, so he’ll have to go on lying, flip-flopping, and bumbling while hoping some of his very expensive mud sticks.  Money can buy a lot of things, but love clearly isn’t among them.

Romney seems okay with that, but history might disagree.  Republicans (and the great majority of the media) loved Bush, and simply adored Reagan.  This undeserved and mostly unreciprocated adulation not only buffered them from criticism once in office, but more importantly, it got them there, and the same is true of Obama.  As I’ve said before, and it becomes more obvious each day, no one not named Romney loves Romney, or will admit it if they do.  The cheapness of the donors is, ironically, reflected in the listlessness of the voters.  On paper, Romney is the perfect candidate: looks, money, family, money, business experience, money, and money.  In real life, the paper turns out to be cardboard.

No tendentious description of the phenomenon is required, nor is a detailed and boring historical context necessary, since they (like the poor) “have always been with us.”   But the sudden “surge” of poseurs, fakers, demagogues, deadbeats, and crooks stands out right now, as our vaunted world economy teeter-totters, and institutions – from colleges to banks to temples of journalism, and pinnacles of power – croak under the strain.

Here’s a partial list, culled from today’s headlines, of new and emerging Little Men.  Please feel free to add a name which may have been missed in this initial installment.  Step right up!  There’s room for everyone, and probably no end to it, once the battle has been joined.

Herewith:  The Little Men Of The Moment!

Silvio Berlusconi - the blessedly former prime minister of Italy.  The ultimate Mistero Buffo of Italian politics pledged to resign (and by God he did!) if a new, technocratic government now in formation can begin cobbling together a fiscal plan to prevent massive default by Italy, a member state in the Eurozone.  But like the magician/clown he is, some skeptical Burlesquecrony-watchers are wondering if this world-class fraudster and cockmaster will ever leave the stage (and, by God! – he hinted upon departing he might continue lurking behind the arras, in Milan).  What is not in dispute is Berlusconi has diddled and fiddled within his court of  whores and bunga bunga hangers-on, while failing, over twenty years, to do the job he was elected to do, so that Italy – more than Greece, Portugal, Spain, or Ireland – may truly sink the European “common market,” and possibly, the world economy itself.  Basta!

Joe Paterno – the disgraced former head football coach of Penn State.  Whereas Berlusconi was not a great man, Paterno might have been, to the extent he fashioned a winning, and honorable, sports tradition.  He did win a lot of football games; ya gotta give him that!  Brought truckloads of money to Beaver Stadium too!  His teams won, or contended for, quite a few national championships.  And he did, judging by the loyalty of the Penn State community, demand and get excellence from his players, on and off the field, for over two generations.  Some of them actually read books; most graduated.  He did not, sadly, measure up when faced with an unavoidable moral dilemma.  He has experienced a great fall.  His catharsis, and that of Penn State, awaits.

Jon Corzine – resigned CEO of MF Global, former Democratic governor and senator from New Jersey, former Goldman Sachs honcho.  Corzine took a mere year and a half or so to capsize MF Global, which traced its lineage to the sugar trade in late 18th century England.  Corzine bet on sovereign debt and lost.  Big.  MF Global under Corzine, a darling of Democratic big wigs, reported a nearly $192  million quarterly loss after betting on European government bonds.  At the end of October the company’s credit rating went to junk, and it filed for Chapter 11.  About a thousand Wall Street wizards went out on the dole.  Just like that.  MF Global’s demise has been logged in as the 8th largest bankruptcy in American history.  Corzine, a little man posting big losses, appears to have a few little Democratic Party leaders around him, saying:  “sssshhhh.”

Bill O’Reilly – reigning Fox News gasbag.  O’Reilly, a little twit with global reach, has been enjoying a two months-long perch on the New York Times bestseller list with a book he “wrote” on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.  However, the “no spin” king’s tome has been banned from the shelves of the Ford’s Theater book store, operated by the National Park service.  Ford’s Theater was where Lincoln was shot by the mad thespian, John Wilkes Booth.  Among numerous errors cited in the book, O’Reilly asserts there was an Oval Office in Lincoln’s White House, when in fact the executive suite was not built until 1909, when, presumably, there was a federal budget surplus.  In another egregious error, O’Reilly for some reason had Honest Abe “furling” his brow sometime before he was shot (he might have been furling about the feckless Gen. McClellan).  Everyone knows a man would “furrow” his brow, not furl the damn thing, whatever the situation, right?  This flap from Ford’s Theater appears to be a collection of minor quibbles to the author.  O’Reilly’s publisher says the little man is working on another quickie about presidents, to be written in a “narrative, novelistic fashion.”  O’Reilly responded to the Ford’s Theater critique by saying, “Enemies are trying to hurt my book.”

Rick Perry - governor of Texas and Republican presidential candidate.  Perry doesn’t know which federal departments he wants to shut down, but he does know he wants American foreign aid under his administration to start with no money.  Way to go, little man!  Perry may seem drunk at debates he’s appeared in, but it’s just the best a little man from Texas can do.  What can you expect from a guy who used Whiteout on a rock at the entrance to his family’s vacation retreat, but can’t remember why exactly?  Also, such a little man should be cut some slack if he thinks real, light amber New England maple syrup might work as a companion to barbecue sauce!

Michael Bloomberg - mayor of New York.  Well now he’s done it!  There’s a lot of talk in the city about how bored Bloomberg is with his job; and a guy I know who was hanging around Zuccotti Park on Tuesday morning while the cops were mopping up says simply that Bloomie will run for prez as an indie and pull close to 20 percent, drawing the indie vote,  while cutting into Obama’s hide.  Result:  one crazy Republican president, unless it’s Willard the flip-flopper.  Maybe Bloomie will turn out to be a little big man.

Karl Rove – formerly Bush’s brain.  During an appearance at Johns Hopkins recently, Rove, evidently exasperated by taunts from OWS protestors and other unsavory characters, actually challenged one (or all) of them to a fight.  This does not compute.  It’s just hard to imagine this dweeby little man stepping up to his own challenge.  Bombast knows no bounds.

Rush Limbaugh – radio bombasterbasta! – par excellence.  This week the little man of the airwaves used every slur in the book to denigrate the OWS protesters, particularly those evicted from Zuccotti Park, since Tuesday was not a slow news day, and therefore an opportunity for el Rushbo to spike his sagging rating a tad.  Limbaugh spent minute after minute on one of his shows this week obsessing about the OWSers’ tendencies to spew precious bodily fluids all over public spaces across America’s fruited plain, just to call attention to their sad state, which to dittoheads means they’ll have to move back home with Mom & Dad when it’s all over – as a spent force.  Only a man with a little whatnot could stoop to that.

Well, there you have it!  But there are many other candidates to be nominated, to say nothing of the untold millions of Honorable Mentions, past and present.  Step right up.  Tell the nation who you’d like to see on the Pedestal of Heroes in this category.

Republicans, who unaccountably thought he was super-wonderful the whole time and still do, predictably learned the wrong lesson from the last decade.  In their bubble world, you’re doing something wrong unless large numbers of people despis you, so guys like Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio can be forgiven for their absurd overconfidence, and poor Jonah Goldberg can likewise be forgiven for thinking Rep. Paul Ryan is a towering specimen of Presidential timber.  All have employed the lowest of Bush tactics: demonizing (and creating) enemies, flouting due process, shutting down dissent, and lying when the truth would sound better, and all have scored Pyrrhic victories here and there before crashing into a solid wall of public and judicial opposition.  All are, to varying degrees, in deep electoral jeopardy, with upside-down approval ratings and recall elections looming for the worst of them.  None of them will be remotely able to help the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, except perhaps by hiding out in Rush Limbaugh’s guest house for six months.

Now, if you were a normal politician in such a situation, you might attempt a little bit of a public course correction, but these are Republicans, whose contempt for ordinary voters is only matched by their contempt for democracy itself, so they have a better idea: disenfranchising voters.  From Florida to Wisconsin, a passel of  restrictive voter-ID laws, hatched by Koch-funded ALEC, are being rammed through partisan legislatures and fast-tracked to kick in before angry voters can return to the polls.  Nationally, Republicans are blithely dismissing a string of recent special election defeats as a mere failure of “messaging.”  Really.

What they’re saying is that the large number of Americans who rightly despise them shouldn’t be voting at all, and of the rest of them, not a few are too dumb to make up their own minds without being shown Frank Luntz flash cards.  Is it possible that such obnoxious treatment, once haughtily doled out to easy targets like hippies, gays, brown people, and their ilk, is finally going to reach a tipping point when it lands equally on old people, teachers, firemen, bus drivers, nurses, lifeguards, policemen, scientists, and what have you?   The point of offending people for political gain, as practiced by Republicans, is to gain the loyalty of those who don’t like the target group, thus forgoing relatively few votes to gain many more.  Thus, the strategy depends on simple arithmetic….  ah, that’s it.  For Republicans, arithmetic has now gone the way of evolution, climate change, and economics; that is, it’s slipped the surly bonds of reality to ascend, gloriously, into the ether of faith.  Remember Karl Rove’s “math,” which proved beyond a doubt that Republicans would retain the House in 2006?  That’s what’s happening here.

Republicans got so busy subtracting people from their supporters that they forgot about adding them on the other side, and thus are left hoping, once again, that money can buy love, or at least votes.   At the rate they’re going, they might as well open a Tiffany’s account for every American and skip the annoying barrage of corporate-sponsored attack ads.  It might be cheaper, and after all, if it worked for Newt…..

The good part, though, is that as usual, Jim and Mike always accidentally include real information in their zeal to get every word right, and better yet, have to resort to such weak evidence to back up the inanities they’re propounding, that they do achieve a sort of low comedy.  In a breaking news article entitled, “The GOP’s Winning Streak,” we learn from Karl Rove himself, among many others, that the only thing standing in the way of his Permanent Republican Majority is a need for a little “education” targeted at unbelievers.  Remember when Condi Rice wanted to “educate” people about weapons of mass destruction?  Of course you did, because you aren’t Jim and Mike.

A few juicy tidbits:

—Deficits are all the rage on Capitol Hill, and will be until Congress wends its way through the debt limit fight and the next budget. The word “deficit” appeared in 470 documents in the Congressional Record between the beginning of January and the end of March, more than in any session’s opening since 1995, according to a review by POLITICO. And Americans listened: Asked by Gallup to identify the most important problem facing the nation, 13 percent said “federal debt” in March of this year, up from 8 percent a year ago.

Is it me, or is it pretty pathetic to claim that a rise from single to low double digits in the face of a 24/7 media barrage is something to crow about?  Thirteen percent?  Twice that many people, at least, think the moon landing was a fake.  Hint to Jim and Mike….  Don’t confuse us with the facts, as they tend to make the story fall apart.

—The broader budget debate is now fought on the tea party’s terms: It’s not whether to reduce government, it’s by how much. This helps explain why serious centrist commentators and even some liberals PRAISED a $6 trillion budget cut plan proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). Remember how a similar plan was received two years ago?

Yippee!  People have gotten stupider, which must mean more of them are reading Politico.

—Thanks to a pickup of 675 legislative seats in 2010 – many because of these budget principles — the most sweeping work is getting done in states. Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana are now working, real-time labs for discovering how much the party can cut government – without cutting off the support of independents. A GOP senator told us the party studies what happens in these state showdowns to test the limits of what will work here. One early finding: Many think Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) went too far, too fast by gutting union power without first educating the public.

Ya think?  How did these guys get jobs?

“The country knows it’s in serious trouble,” Gingrich said. “You see this with Scott Walker, you see it with John Kasich [in Ohio], you see it with Rick Scott [in Florida], you see it with Chris Christie [in New Jersey], you see it with Mitch Daniels [in Indiana].”

Ah, the most hated politicians in America look popular to Newt Gingrich, and the Bambi-like reporter goes ahead and types.  Better yet, he doesn’t get the unintentional hilarity of this morsel from John Thune, and thus makes his irredeemably boring and hackish little puff piece funny (emphasis mine):

“If you overreach too far, you can get a backlash,” Thune cautioned. “We have to sound reasonable. But the reason the president moved so far is that he has recognized that the government has gotten much, much larger, and that most independents in the country are very uncomfortable with that.”

No follow-up question, natch.  After hearing from Karl Rove about how we can cut “trillions” later, easy, we get more choice blather from Newt Gingrich, and then another word about how people just need the be “educated,” from, improbably, Tim Pawlenty, to wrap the whole thing up with a bow:

Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor and 2012 presidential candidate, said by phone from San Jose, Calif., that fiscal arguments have given the party a broader appeal as more people “became aware and educated that it’s not just a matter of political rhetoric – it’s a matter of sixth-grade math.”

No, in sixth grade they explain some of the crucial differences between a Family Budget and the Federal Budget, which is one reason Republicans are so hot on home schooling.  Later, you learn that everything Republicans say is the opposite of the truth.  But not at Politico, despite all evidence.

“We are in for a sustained period of structural reform,” Pawlenty said. “The country is prepared for the change. The public deserves the truth. They can handle the truth. … Given how deep the hole is, I’m not worried about overreach. I think we should try to be as bold and courageous as the American people will tolerate, and we need to lead them there.”

That sounds like rhetoric to me, and of a kind of scary sort…  Reminds me of this:

Is the juvenile cluelessness and stupidity of HBGary’s Aaron Barr’s IM exchange with an unnamed (but clearly smarter) coder, with his poorly spelled assertions that despite the math, he was still right, any different than G. Gordon Liddy’s elaborate charts with plans to hire hookers and blow up the Brookings Institution?  Only in scale; both were flagrantly illegal and potentially disastrous if exposed, but they both served the purpose of further empowering the powerful at the expense of everyone else, so they were, shall we say, “on the table.”  Both were immediately showered in a hail of non-denial denials from the faux-horrified higher-ups, and scapegoats were duly chosen and dispatched.

Unfortunately, 2011 is not 1974, and today one could drop a bomb on Washington and not injure anyone who is even surprised, much less outraged, at such chilling, multimillion dollar hijinks against ordinary citizens and journalists.  After all, planting fake documents with their adversaries and then loudly “discovering” they were forgeries worked pretty damn well in the more capable hands of Karl Rove when he needed to get rid of Dan Rather, so why not try it again?  Smearing progressive groups with guilt by association and doctored “evidence” was a great success in killing ACORN, so why not get the SEIU and all the rest of them next?  We can make fun of the childish bravado of Mr. Barr and and the absurd melange of venom and pearl-clutching pouring out of the Chamber of Commerce, but who laughs last?

As Glenn Greenwald, one of the operation’s chief targets, points out, the only thing unusual about this story is that we actually found out about it before the damage was done.  That generally isn’t so, as careers are ruined, punitive lawsuits are filed, and voices of dissent are routinely crushed as the comfortable, well, get comfortable-er, and the media gazes on approvingly.  After all, if it’s good for the Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America, only a dirty America-hating hippie could possibly be against it…   The Obama DOJ even recommended the ridiculously well-connected (scoff) law firm, Hunton and Williams, who assembled Barr’s team of Merry Pranksters, to BofA to aid in its preemptive attack on WikiLeaks, and is currently arresting hackers faster than HBGary was ever able to find them.

While it’s heartwarming to see the other firms involved in this skulduggery, like Palantir and Berico, denounce such behavior in the scathing terms their lawyers undoubtedly concocted for them, anyone who believes for a moment that they are chastened by this little episode ought to consider that this is the new normal, and nobody involved is going to jail, or even go help Jimmy Carter build houses or something.  ”Security,” devoted to squelching public opinion when it conflicts with, or worse, impedes however slightly, the aims of the elite, is the only growth industry left in post-Bush America, gobbling up the budgets of governments and corporations alike, and as everyone but the rich continue to be squeezed it will only become more “necessary.”

For a moment, the whores have been dragged into church, and as you’d expect, they’re a little nervous there.  But Saturday night is always just around the corner, and there are plenty more customers waiting.

Not surprisingly, Palin’s Fox colleague (!) Karl Rove, sees the unlikelihood of a White House decorated in gingham and moose heads with ATV’s littering the lawn anytime soon, and has wisely sounded the alarm early about Palin’s undeniable dingbattery and its sobering potential to rob Republicans of another shot at packing the courts and starting some more wars, which would both help make voting even more pointless for ordinary Americans, a longtime goal of the right.  He realizes that any Republican President, who will by current definition be frantically consumed with robbing Americans of their freedom and future, not to mention their money, will be always relying on “plausible deniability” something he learned at the knee of his first hero, Richard Nixon.  Rove’s clearly as nervous as a whore in church about Palin’s frighteningly inescapable power, which is the sort of thing can’t help but warm the cockles of my heart.

You see, Palin’s long on denial, alright, but that plausible thing?  Not going to happen in this lifetime.  That woman would lose, badly, a spelling bee with Dan Quayle, a personality contest with Leona Helmsley, and a game of Scrabble against her son Trig, but for the knuckle-dragging, semiliterate “base” the Republicans have so shamelessly and effectively courted of late, all these unseemly qualities are what make her so darn lovable.  Without Palin, and the horse(shit) she rode in on, the Republicans know they are toast, however lavishly buttered by their corporate masters.  The trailer park crowd they need to win isn’t going to meekly accept their beloved Rodeo Queen being tossed aside for a silver-tongued larcenist like Mitt Romney or a nerdy egghead like Paul Ryan, just two of several reliable servants of the plutocracy Republicans have trotted out so far.  Those guys, after all, know big words and stuff, which betrays a sneaky, crypto-foreign elitism  that is now all but automatically disqualifying for the Republican primary voter of the new century.  This convenient but increasingly problematic new “base,” stoked by Fox News and a boatload of  corporate money, is on a stupid binge, and they just can’t get enough anymore, no matter the consequences.  George Bush was like a tantalizing ice cream cone, and after that they want nothing less than Sarah, who is, by comparison, a Double Banana (Republic) Split with extra marshmallow goo and three maraschino cherries on top.  (No hot fudge, though; it’s too, well, brown…) No wonder Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden went over like a fart in church with this crowd, who already wear XXL t-shirts proclaiming, “I’m with stupid,” and would be happy to sport the same pithy phrase on a bumper sticker, with “2012″ tacked on at the end.

You go, girl.

It seems like such a long time ago, when Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, performing in England, told an audience that she was “embarrassed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”  As an Oregonian I personally was less embarrassed, but I’d been routinely apologizing to foreign friends about Bush for years; he was so deliberately obnoxious, especially internationally, that any American setting foot on a European stage had to be deeply ashamed, and simple manners would mandate saying so.  To all the world save a third or so of the dumbest Americans, the man is and was a complete and utter failure.  That plain fact lies behind the fierce and immediate manufactured outrage over Maines’ remark; Rove and his henchmen simply couldn’t have people stating the obvious about their naked emperor and what a small, well, decider he had.

Like many before and since who were targeted by similar White House smear campaigns during the Bush era, Maines learned her lesson, one that, to this day, few elected Democrats and almost no one in the mainstream media has figured out: back down to a bully, and you will never see your lunch money again as long as you live.  Republicans, having not a single policy that can be honestly sold to voters, deal only in lies, smears, and character assassination; always have, always will.  It’s simply, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” updated with, “and if you do, it’s because you hate America.”  Concede to half of their kooky ideas, and they’ll still take their toys and go home, blaming you for your intransigence and extremism.  Concede to all of them, and they’ll come up with even kookier ones to demand next.  Meanwhile all the kookiness, put into action, inevitably sends the country down the toilet, and that’s your fault, too.

Why then, is Natalie Maines so much smarter than President Obama, most of the Democrats, and practically all of the liberal media?  It seems that a lot of fancy schooling was wasted on people who, tragically, weren’t paying enough attention on the playground when they were eight, and as such really oughtn’t be trusted with such responsible jobs today.  If we were to believe that the President was being honest when he said he thought he could work with the Republicans going forward, despite their loud and repeated declarations that their only goal was his political demise, then it’s time to stop talking so much about how smart he is.  That is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard, with or without Rachel Maddow’s laugh track, and frankly I’m again embarrassed by my president, who like his despised predecessor, is either lying or stupid.

One could forgive Obama’s touching naivete, I suppose, if he gets his information from TV news or, say, the Washington Post, who all still believe in fairies and bipartisanship, not necessarily in that order.  Each day since his election, the media has trotted out a rogue’s gallery of Republican retreads, washouts, and charlatans to predict dire outcomes from any policy to the left of Dick Cheney, and Obama has hardly disappointed them.  Though the unpopular Bush wars continue unabated, foot-stomping generals and unreconstructed neocons in and out of government still want more; ten years in Afghanistan has stealthily grown to thirteen or so, and several new wars have already been picked out for later, under a president whose anti-war stance was what catapulted him to the national spotlight in the first place.  Torture has been pushed under the rug, Guantanamo has been made permanent, illegal spying legitimized, Social Security only lamely defended, gays have not made any gains toward full citizenship (like Latinos), Wall Street and big Pharma have been each handed another multibillion dollar “get out of jail free” card, and huge, ruinously expensive tax cuts for the rich are about to be passed, paid for by “shared sacrifice,” and we all know what that means.  What, pray, could the righties want that they haven’t already gotten?  That’s the scary part, and to those of us not in the media it’s also blindingly obvious.

“Not Ready to Make Nice” would have been a nice and certainly more morally defensible mantra than “Looking forward, not back” for Obama and Democrats in the post-Bush era; Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, George Bush, John Yoo, John Bolton, and all the rest are now free, not just from jail, but to go on TV every night to refight previously lost battles, quite successfully, it turns out, while Obama looks like a vacillating, defeated cipher.  How’s that bipartisan-y thing workin’ out for ya?

Obama could learn a thing or two from Natalie Maines, who refused to shut up and sing, won respect, and sold a hell of a lot of records for it.  Notice how no one’s asking her to step down.

Nixon, under whose tutelage Karl Rove learned his political ropes, reveled in the power of redneck anger, inviting the “hard hats” who beat up hippie war protesters to the White House and famously blaming the victims for the Kent State slaughter, shortly after then-California Governor Ronald Reagan tear-gassed protesters at Berkeley and intoned that the Vietnam problem could be solved by genocidal carpet-bombing, “… pave it, stripe it, and be home by Christmas.”  Bloodlust is now just part of the DNA of the Republican Party; just ask America’s Worst President, George Bush, whose approval rating shot skyward as he babbled, “dead or alive,” and “smoke ‘em out,” to dazzled FOX watchers in nursing home dayrooms all across America.  Republicans clearly got carried away with their initial electoral success at selling violent retribution for its own sake during those years, and now such final solutions have acquired quite a devoted and evidently insatiable following.

For these “folks,” as Bill O’Reilly calls them, once you have God, Blackwater, and the Koch brothers on your side, the Ten Commandments no longer apply to you, and it’s time to pull out the terrible swift sword, but good.  For decades, as the wealthy benefactors of the Republicans sought to drown out rational discourse, which tended not to go their way, they chose to create an Axis of Thuggery, first by doing away with the Fairness Doctrine, which was rooted in the quaint notion of giving equal time to both sides, and then grabbing the public airwaves to spew right-wing hate radio from sea to shining sea.  Rupert spent a half billion dollars to launch Fox News, to give Hate Radio and its social Darwinist, fact-free ethos a video companion.  Over time, though, the act began to get old, and competitive forces made these propaganda arms more and more difficult to control even as they became ever more violent and apocalyptic in the wake of Bush’s many catastrophes and the election of a, you know, to the Presidency, but a desperate and demoralized party stung by two searing defeats had nowhere else to go.  The craven corporatists stoking this fascistic know-nothingism couldn’t be bothered by the fates of any victims of the violent rhetoric they were sponsoring, for the simple reason that for the time being it seemed to be working.  After all, in midterm elections they needn’t bother with the delicate sensibilities of of the so-called “independent” voter, they go for the guys with guns, missing teeth, and a trailer full of restraining orders, who lap this stuff up like it was spilled Budweiser.  So some hippie chick got her head stomped….   Maybe it’ll teach her a lesson.  It’s hard to believe that, on some level, even a grabby racketeer like Dick Armey or a fiendish parasite like Karl Rove isn’t made a tad uncomfortable by all this unseemly directness; they have spent years perfecting their Victorian fainting, followed by schoolmarmish finger-wagging, performance art over the slightest insult from the left, and now their guys are, pretty much daily, decorating the pavement with liberals.  Worse, they do it so un-heroically…  several larger Americans ganging up on a girl, or an old fat guy, is not the sort of television image Rove could easily pretty up with a sunset or codpiece, which probably explains his occasional, if mild, expressions of distaste.

Unsurprisingly, even as they fall into their unintentionally telling fake panic attack about “voter fraud” that besets them each November, the Republicans now have, or ought to have, twin fears; winning and losing.  Win, and they’ll be saddled with a passel of loudmouth nitwits in Congress, making daily asses of themselves and dragging the brand down even further; lose, and they might realize that there is a bottom to how low one can go in politics, and they have no plan B.  Either way, they will have a self-created,  large and angry army of  conspiracy-minded neanderthals breathing down their necks, or worse.

It couldn’t have happened to nicer guys.

Trouble is, they’ve already tried that, ad nauseam.  Fear-mongering via deceptive advertising (augmented, ruthlessly, by Fox et al…) does seem to work, at least for a while, but then what?  Absurd and extravagantly financed horseshit does move voters, at least at first, but after a few months, they do inevitably get sick of it, and this movement, intrinsically, has no plan B.  Will more ads save Meg Whitman in California, so many months after the “Demon Sheep” fiasco?  What about Linda McMahon, who isn’t sure what the minimum wage is, but is nonetheless certain it’s too high…  will more of her own millions save her?  Our local clueless, anti-minimum wage richie, Oregon gubernatorial candidate and lousy basketball player Chris Dudley managed not to earn a single major newspaper endorsement in the whole state, despite the millions of dollars spent so far that created an early lead, and is now sinking in the polls.  While liberal elitists like myself may decry the stupidity of the average voter, we are well acquainted with their annoyance at repetitive garbage pumped into their living rooms, and thus take hope at this juncture.

The media, as you’d expect from the eager beneficiaries of the Money Bomb, emphatically discount the notion that voters even care who’s paying to deceive them, but better late than never, Democrats including President Obama have finally caught on to the impact on the ground that mega-million campaigns create in the electorate: mainly skepticism about who, in this beleaguered economy, can afford to bombard them with such factually challenged nonsense, and more importantly, why?  In California, the money spent by out-of-state oil interests to “postpone” that state’s landmark carbon-reduction law was so abusively saturating that even Enron-backed Republican Governor Arnold Schwarznegger felt comfortable calling the sponsors out, publicly, for their “oil-black hearts,”  and the ridiculous reefer madness hyperbole spilled by the drug warrior guard against Proposition 19 has the historically apathetic youth vote ready to turn out in droves, dashing Republicans’ overconfident hopes there.

It’s too soon to say whether, on balance, the “Permanent Republican Majority” envisioned by George Bush, Karl Rove, and the rest of them, predicated on getting enough fanatical right-wingers on the Supreme Court to pass such a blatant Democracy-ender as Citizens (!) United was a success or failure for the political movement that dreamed it up, but it is soon enough to say one thing:  Money can buy a lot of things, but it can’t buy love.

“Surely the Lord sent Jimmy Carter,” the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s father proclaimed at the 1976 Democratic Convention, “to come on out and bring America back where she belongs.”

Ah, Carter….   No right-wing rewrite of history would be complete without him.  Go on, Fatso; this can’t help but be good.

The avowedly “born again” Jimmy Carter campaigned on his personal religiosity far more than any president since World War II. In an interview with Pat Robertson on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Carter explained that “secular law is compatible with God’s laws,” but if the two were in conflict, “we should honor God’s law.” Robertson endorsed Carter. So did Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition, who said, “God has his hand upon Jimmy Carter to run for president.”

This only comes as a surprise to someone as ignorant as Jonah.  Much was made of the time about Carter’s then-odd and somewhat backward-seeming religion, and his clear devotion to it.  Those were the days, huh?  More importantly, Carter’s thought about God’s law have been (surprise!) deceptively edited; when he talked about following God’s law, he was referring to fellow evangelistic Christians, not all Americans, as the right proudly does today.  Jonah left this out because it contradicted his chosen narrative, because in addition to being physically repulsive, he’s a liar.

Though it is hard to fathom today, given that Carter is one of the dullest personalities in American public life, there was a time when he was seen as a deeply charismatic figure. One of his aides privately urged him in a memo to “capitalize on your greatest asset — your personal charm.” Newsweek insisted that he “evokes memories of Kennedy’s style.” Jules Witcover, who chronicled the 1976 campaign in his book, “Marathon: The Pursuit of the Presidency 1972-1976,” writes that Carter’s magnetism was so powerful, he could conduct “personal political baptisms” with voters.

More lies, or more charitably, deliberately plugged ears.  Carter has received many awards for his tireless global work in the three decades since he left office, and has been widely recognized as one of our best ex-presidents.  That’s why garbage like this has to be written all the time, especially by those like Jonah who are utterly devoid of any meaningful accomplishment themselves.

In an article partially headlined, “On Carter: ‘Country is Ready’ for the Hope He Stirs,” U.S. News & World Report (which wasn’t always a college ranking guide) interviewed Brandeis political scientist Thomas Cronin, who explained that “Carter’s coalition is more of a personal matter.” Voters are attracted to his “engaging personality and to his smile, his centrist tone.” Some in the Democratic Party hoped that Carter’s stunning success in the South and with the more socially conservative evangelical vote was a sign that the Democrats had truly reclaimed the center — and the White House with it — for generations.

Another lie.  Carter’s appeal was personal, after the stench left behind by the vile Richard Nixon, for whom Jonah’s harridan of a mother labored tirelessly and sleazily, but no one ever claimed, as Rove did, about “generations” of Democratic dominance.  Has the LA Times no fact-checkers?  (I ask only rhetorically, natch…)

It was not to be. The liberals left him in the primary for Ted Kennedy. The evangelicals and the Southerners left him in the fall for Ronald Reagan. If the Lord had sent Carter, it was to set the stage for the Reagan revolution.

Yeah, the Lord held those hostages until Reagan’s inaugural and everything.  If The Lord also gave Jonah Goldberg a column, I’ll lay my lot with the other guy.

The Carter presidency failed and his coalition dissipated because you can’t hold a coalition together with personality alone. You need to actually govern in a way that satisfies your constituency.

Says, Goldberg, former President of…  Overeaters Anonymous?

“The New Deal coalition is called the ‘New Deal Coalition’ and not ‘the Great Depression coalition’ for a reason,” says political analyst Jay Cost. FDR offered a winning political program. Carter offered sanctimony, arrogance and the sense that he bit off more than he could handle.

Carter offered concrete steps to wean us from foreign oil, tried haltingly to restore an economy battered by inflation and a pointless war, sought a human-rights based foreign policy, and his only “failure,” was not beating the cretinous and vacant Ronald Reagan, whose Iran shenanigans before and after his election are now well-known.

If the name Barack Obama hasn’t sprung to mind yet, you must be staying in the same bunker where much of the Democratic leadership is holed up.

Well, a false narrative has been flimsily tossed together, so anyone capable of fogging a mirror would know what comes next.  Remember, Jonah, you’re writing for a newspaper, whose audience is confined to the literate.  Please try harder.

Obama’s campaign was Carteresque on several fronts. The consummate outsider, Obama promised a transformational presidency, a new accommodation with religion, a new centrism, a changed tone. And there was no shortage of conjecture that Obama — a.k.a. “the one” — was sent by the Lord to his chosen people, “the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

Again, after another disastrous and Goldberg-supported Republican ruined the country, people were waiting for something, alright.  ”The One” was almost entirely a creation of the right, with a little help from Maureen Dowd, and as such is both a lie and irrelevant.

The Carter-Obama comparison is not new. Rich Lowry of the National Review visited it at length in 2007. It’s also imperfect. For starters, Obama was never as conservative as Carter, and Obama has gotten more accomplished than Carter did. But he hasn’t governed in a way that has held his coalition together.

I always consult Rich Lowry when I want mature, unbiased political analysis, just like a consult Sarah Palin for grammar tips.  But the implication that Obama has been some sort of liberal steamroller was too ridiculous for even Jonah to say outright, so he didn’t, mercifully.

After the 2008 election, various liberal pundits insisted that Obama’s personal popularity would bring about a sea change and a “new liberal order,” in the words of Peter Beinart in Time magazine. According to Beinart, the Obama congressional coalition appeared as enduring as FDR’s. Youngsters seemed like a pot of electoral gold, because the under-30 vote went for Obama by a margin of 2 to 1. Harold Meyerson celebrated that Obama’s popularity among the young would usher in a rebirth in popularity for socialism. E.J. Dionne insisted that the millennials were the next “New Dealers.”

Which they turned out not to be, and the base was lost in Obama’s many compromises with the GOP and big donors.  Funny how that part goes unmentioned.

That’s all somewhere between dubious and ludicrous now. As this newspaper reported over the weekend, “Obama’s coalition is frayed and frazzled.” Independents defected long ago, and young people are heading for the door. And every day he seems more like the Lord’s unwitting herald of the revolution to come.

Here’s the final, premature gloating about how the Republicans have Obama beat already, which if Jonah were as smart as, say, Karl Rove, he wouldn’t spout off so readily….   If Republicans have one problem that prevents them from realizing Karl Rove’s dreams of a Permanent Majority, it’s overconfidence borne of just the sort of historical idiocy Goldberg is trotting out here.  The chalkboard theories work on the unwashed masses, but pundits are supposed to be too clever to start believing them.  Sadly for such pathetic wannabes like Jonah, there are such things as books, and The Google, too, and his long-suffering readers might know how to use them.